Hitchcock was worried that the stage roots of The Farmer’s Wife . . . might show through in his film adaptation. It was a needless worry. This semi-comic story of a widowed farmer’s attempts to find himself a new wife is shot, as Fran.ois Truffaut observed, “like a thriller.” The camera, on occasion handled by Hitch himself, observes the action cinematically. . . .Each prospective wife—the horsy one, the hysterical one, the high-spirited one—is presented as a comic stereotype. Rejected by each, the farmer ultimately discovers what has been literally staring him—and the audience—in the face all the time: his young, attractive, and devoted housekeeper.

—British Film Institute

• Written by Eliot Stannard, Hitchcock, based on a play by Eden Phillpots. Photographed by Jack Cox. With Jameson Thomas, Lillian Hall-Davis, Gordon Harker, Gibb McLaughlin. (107 mins, Silent, B&W, DCP, Restored by the BFI National Archive in association with StudioCanal, From Rialto Pictures)